China is imposing strict conformity on views expressed in universities.

Western countries such as France which prohibit disagreement with the official view of certain issues, such as the genocide of the Armenians, provide China with an excuse for its own restrictions on permitted opinions.

Alexei Navalny was given a suspended sentence of over 3 years — meaning that Putin can hold this over Navalny for any sort of protest activity that Putin chooses to declare illegal.

This is similar in spirit, though not in legal detail, to the practice in the UK and the US of making arrested protesters agree to refrain from protests as a condition of bail.

The NSA plans to crack into millions of computers and take remote control of them.

A US high school basketball team was kicked out of a tournament for wearing "I can't breathe" protest shirts while preparing for the match.

What strict repression! I am sure the tournament organizers will say, "We're not racist, we only oppose criticizing racism. We're not in favor of cops' killing people, we just insist that nobody rebuke them when they do."

A thug union objected to a right-wing city councilor's union-busting plans, so their private investigators tried to frame him.

I too object to those union-busting plans — the fact that the union members are thugs doesn't excuse them — but this form of opposition is pure thug.